Marcela Valle El Corcho Washed Parainema

My grandfather built a nursery for new coffee plants in the patio of our home when I was little, and I was fascinated by it right away, so I always wanted to help him. And my father often took me to our finca when I was a child. 

I still remember how much I loved being there. Now, I’m a civil engineer, but first and foremost I am a coffee producer. A bit like my dad, who has been a teacher at our local elementary school during his entire career, but who was always at our finca when he didn’t stand in front of the classroom.

In 2020, I participated in a series of workshops organized by Cafesmo, to learn how to prepare specialty coffees and it was an extraordinary experience. Maybe, because I am an engineer, I have a brain that loves science and technique, and preparing a great specialty coffee is about exactly that.

My brother – who is also an engineer – and I immediately started to work on a solar dryer and a few months later we had built one with 324 removable African beds. This makes it a lot easier to move coffee from one layer or one corner of our solar dryer to another, so we can accelerate or slow down the drying process depending on the conditions and particularities of each lot. 

So, while I still work as an engineer, I am now back in our finca a lot more than before. The mood is just too attractive to stay away. The climate is cool and my co-workers kind. They smile more often than office people too. On our finca, I’m now in charge of micro-lots and processes.

The process that I personally prefer is honey. It’s authentic, somewhere in between the other processes, although I like preparing anaerobic coffees a lot because it is a little more challenging and you need to get your time frames right.

And when the sun goes down behind the hills that surround our land, I love to sit down quietly with my last coffee of that day, one that I made, literally from crop to cup!